GaN substrates are widely employed in light-emitting diodes (LEDs), laser diodes (LDs) and other semiconductor devices.
In thus employing GaN substrates, the process whereby the substrates are manufactured is ordinarily separate from the process whereby the manufactured GaN substrates are used to produce semiconductor devices, meaning that the manufactured GaN substrates are stored for a fixed time period, and then used to produce the semiconductor devices. Therefore, various methods of housing and storing manufactured GaN substrates have been proposed to date. (For example, cf. Japanese Unexamined Patent App. Pub. 2000-355392).
With these conventional GaN substrate-storing methods, however, inasmuch as the GaN substrates are housed and stored under a clean air atmosphere, the surface of the GaN substrates oxidizes due to the prolonged storage, which has been prohibitive of manufacturing semiconductor devices with favorable properties.